Illustration Friday - Travel

This is a recent illustration just out in the latest Woman & Home which I thought was a good fit for this week's IF topic.  A few tips on packing for your holidays; using straws to keep jewellery safe and packing baby powder as a sand remover...I'm not jetting off anywhere exotic, with this lovely weather we are having in the U.K why go anywhere else!! Today
( my birthday) has been a scorcher so we enjoyed a relaxing picnic in the sun with friends, playing frisbee and chasing after Jimmy, great fun!

How does your garden grow?

Here are my latest illustrations for Woman & Home just out in the July edition, it's time to pick your peas and tend to your roses...I've been trying to get back on track with my garden a bit this year but can't say I've been organised enough to plant any peas or anything else edible for that matter.  I hear that dandelion leaves are rather tasty though and we do have a bumper crop of those!!

Illustration Friday - Eye Glasses

I haven't submitted anything for I.F in ages, but as a glasses wearer myself I was inspired by this weeks topic.  I enjoyed playing around with type on this quote by Dorothy Parker which makes me smile. Fortunately wearing glasses isn't as uncool these days as it was back then!

Mail Me Art 3

Howdy! Here's my entry for Mail Me Art 3. This little cowboy character came from a doodle in my sketchbook, it was nice to create something 'real' as although all my drawing is done by hand with pencil and paper, it only really exists as 'art' once it's scanned into the computer and coloured.
This years submissions had to be drawn directly onto an envelope as no digitally produced work was allowed and my entry is partly inspired by my rediscovery of my rubber stamping materials, it was fun to get inky fingers again!  I took part in a previous Mail Me Art project 3 years ago, which you can see here

Here he is setting off on his journey, it will be interesting to see if he arrives unscathed although he is not travelling too far at all, just up the road really to Leicestershire! I hope Royal Mail will handle him with care!
Royal Mail aren't very popular at the moment with the price rises and size restrictions coming into effect next month which will affect independent sellers on etsy and folksy.  Please take a look at Flora's blog post which makes very interesting reading and please do sign the e petition...

Stamp it out!

I recently rediscovered my old tins of carved rubber stamps that I made over 10 years ago ( yikes that long!) It was nice to find them again and I had forgotten just how many I had made! They were great fun to do and it was always quite a challenge to come up with a design that would work in such a small space: 3cm x 4.5cm. I even made myself a special tool for the job, basically a needle in a wooden handle so I could get all the fine details in. 

Here's a selection of some of my favourites all with a slightly surreal feel.
I spent ages searching for the perfect rubber to carve and I've still got a little stash of them waiting to be cut. I used to sell little groups of framed prints at my exhibitions and the prints do make nice cards too, perhaps I should find the time to make some new ones for my shop...

Bloomin' Spring!

I took a few photos around the house this week to join in with Lou's Nature in the Home feature on her blog. We have had some lovely Spring sunshine this week but it's still so cold!
These are my Mother's Day flowers, and a very good choice too, thanks Jimmy! Gerberas are my favourite flowers and I love the zingy colours which fit in very well with our colour scheme. I'm fond of chrysanthemums too which always remind me of my dear Grandma who always had dried ones in her house when I was little.

I was excited to see that one of my many cacti also decided to flower on Mother's Day.  I have loved cacti and succulents since I was a teenager, I find them strangely beautiful and a bit creepy, especially when they flower.

This is a photo from last year, this cactus always put on an amazing display, but so fleeting as each bloom only lasts a day!

World Book Day!

In honour of World Book Day I thought I'd post a few pics of some books I recently added to my groaning bookshelves.  Last year on an art college reunion visit back to Maidstone, we also visited the lovely town of Rochester and stumbled upon a great old bookshop. It was full to the rafters with books and I made a beeline for the children's section and couldn't resist these. I was really pleased to find 'Jimmy wins a prize' with beautiful illustrations from 1946.  The Owl and the Pussy-Cat dates from 1969 how cool is that psychedelic cat!